A New History of English Metre

by Duffell,Martin J.

• ISBN13: 9781905981915
• ISBN10: 1905981910
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-09-15
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

In the hundred years since the last major history of English metre was published, dramatic changes have occurred in both the way that poets versify in English and the way that scholars analyse verse. Free verse is now firmly established alongside regular metre, and linguistics, statistics, and cognitive theory have contributed to the analysis of both. This new study covers the history of English metre up to the twenty-first century and compares a variety of modern theories to explain it. The result is a concise and up-to-date guide to metre for all students and teachers of English poetry.

Author Biography

Martin Duffell is an Honorary Fellow of Queen Mary, University of London and a Research Fellow in its School of Languages, Linguistics, and Film.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Abbreviations	p. xii
Introduction	p. 1
Linguistic Metrics	p. 6
Comparative Metrics	p. 30
English Historical Metrics: The Germanic Inheritance	p. 51
Versifying in Bilingual England	p. 73
Versifying in Late Medieval Scotland and England	p. 96
The Emergence of English Metrical Canons	p. 116
Consolidating and Refining the Canons	p. 137
Completing the Spectrum of English Metres	p. 161
The Advent of Free Verse	p. 187
Versifying in English in the Twentieth Century	p. 213
Statistical Tables	p. 239
Bibliography	p. 257
Index	p. 275
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.